"Jules Watson has conjured up the mythic past, a
land of Celtic legend and stark grandeur. Readers
will find her world and characters fascinating and
unforgettable." -Sharon Penman, bestselling author of Devil's Brood

MYTHOLOGY

Queen Maeve by J. C. Leyendecker

My novels The Swan Maiden and The Raven Queen
are based entirely on ancient Irish myths. The Dalriada Trilogy was
based on history, but I did wind elements of Irish and Welsh mythology
through the three novels.

To read an interview with me in which I discuss Celtic mythology, click here

The
tale that inspired The Swan Maiden is called “Deirdre of the Sorrows”
or “The Sons of Usnech” in various forms. I followed the known versions
of this story fairly closely as far as the basic plot goes.

The
Raven Queen is more a “re-imagination” of Queen Maeve’s life. We don't have one coherent story about Maeve
as we do with Deirdre, and there are contradictions and confusions in
the snippets of myth about her, so I felt I could largely create my own
"woman behind the myth" tale. However, as a major part of its plot and climax, it includes Maeve's role in the famous Cattle Raid of Cooley, known in Irish
as Táin Bó Cúailnge.

I have strayed from The Tain and other tales about Queen Maeve to reimagine this much-maligned, yet endlessly fascinating mythical Irish woman, leaving episodes and minor characters out, and
changing minor storylines. The major storyline, however, reflects The Tain.

The Ulster Cycle

The
story of Deirdre and Naisi, and Queen Maeve, is part of the group of
old Irish tales called “The Ulster Cycle”, the most famous of which is
the Táin Bó Cúailnge, translated in English as The Cattle Raid of Cooley.

The
Ulster Cycle revolves around the exploits of King Conchobor (anglicized
as Conor) and his Red Branch warriors, including the famous Irish hero
Cúchulainn. The Táin describes a war between Queen Maeve of Connacht
and Conchobor over a famous bull.

Central to the
story of The Táin is the defection of a large number of Red Branch
warriors, led by Fergus mac Roy, from the Ulster side to the Connacht
side. The tale of Deirdre and Naisi, set out in The Swan Maiden, appears to be a foretale that
explains this defection. The consequences of this event go on to drive the plot of The Raven Queen.

History of the Ulster Cycle

Statue of Cuchulainn from Dublin's General Post Office

The historical background to these tales is confusing. The early
peoples of Ireland were not literate, and before Christianity the
stories were passed on orally by bards. Nothing would have been written
down until after the coming of Christianity in the fifth century, but
the earliest surviving manuscripts were made in medieval monasteries
much later even than that.

Thomas Kinsella takes his Deirdre translation from the
twelfth-century text the Book of Leinster, although the language of the
prose sections is actually eighth or ninth century, and the verse
sections a century or two older. Further than this, we are stretching
back into the mists of time

I have mainly followed
Kinsella’s sparse early version of the Deirdre story. However, from the
time that Conor’s envoys are sent to retrieve the fugitives, I switched
to the later fifteenth-century version of the story. This was found in
the Glen Massan manuscript, discovered in Scotland - for Scotland also
lays claim to the Deirdre story.

This later version was used by Lady Gregory in her famous retelling of the Táin Cuchulain of Muirthemne (reprinted, Gerrards Cross, 1970), which embroiders the story with much more detail.

A Window on the Iron Age?

Navan Fort near Armagh, identified as Emain Macha, the main strongholdin the Ulster Cycle

There was an early belief that the Ulster Cycle described the Irish
Iron Age in the centuries before Christ, known by many as the time of
the ancient Celts. Modern scholars don’t like this idea, and instead of
the tales giving us a “window” on Irish prehistory, think they merely
reflect the later period in which they were written down.

Since they were transcribed by Christian monks, no one
really knows how faithfully these tales of so-called Celtic pagans have
been copied, and whether the bias of the writers and the society in
which they lived — medieval Ireland — meant that events have been
changed, or even left out. Is this why the beautiful maiden Deirdre and the fiery Queen Maeve are both scorned in the original myths as being manipulative, selfish, outspoken women, possessing frightening sexual powers over men? We will never know.

For The Swan Maiden, I used Thomas Kinsella’s The Sons of Usnech (Dolmen Press, 1954). The same version of the tale is included in the more widely available The Táin by Thomas Kinsella (Oxford University Press, 1969), from which I also drew inspiration for The Raven Queen. For the latter part of the novel I followed Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (reprinted, Gerrards Cross, 1970).

At Mary’s site you can also find the full text of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, upon which I based the major part of The Raven Queen's plot. Other versions are all over the web.

Swans and Ravens

Swans on Loch Etive

Swans are not connected to Deirdre in the Irish versions of her tale.
However, Scottish folklore says that Deirdre and the Sons of Usnech
flew back to Scotland in the form of swans, and can still be seen
floating on Loch Etive today.

Myths about women being turned into swans, or goddesses
appearing as swans are rife in Irish mythology. There are also bird
references in Deirdre’s tale — she has a dream of birds appearing with
blood in their beaks, to warn her not to go back to Erin.

Birds
are strong Otherworld symbols, since they move between earth and the
heavens, and therefore to the Celts, they could also enter the
Otherworld. Ravens and swans are often associated with goddesses, or
appear as Otherworldly messengers, or shape-shifters. For all these
reasons, I wanted both Deirdre and Maeve to have strong associations with birds, since
they both hover on the borders of The Otherworld.

Ravens, because of their intelligence, are also seen as sacred birds, and often as agents of prophecy. Being carrion eaters, they are also associated with death, war, and the goddesses of death and battle. In Ireland, the goddesses Morrigan, Badb, Nemain and Macha were all associated with war and death in various combinations. Macha, a red-haired goddess of war, is also the founding mother goddess of Ulster (the Ulaid) and of its great fortress Emain Macha. Since Maeve is also portrayed as having red hair and being very warlike, I linked her with the goddess Macha in the book, and gave Maeve, like all good war goddesses, an association with ravens. Some scholars think that Maeve's prominence in the myths suggests she may have actually been a goddess figure originally, reduced by later scribes to a mortal woman, scorned for her sexual exploits and supposed war-mongery. I say she was fascinating!

The
two main mythological ideas I used in the trilogy were those of the
horse goddess, and the sacred wedding or mating between the King and
the Goddess of the Land.

The Horse Goddess

A first-century relief depicting the Celtic horse goddess Epona

Rhiannon is one of the most famous Welsh goddesses; she was a symbol of
fertility and abundance. Her name probably means “Great Queen,” and she
was also a symbol of sovereignty or tribal protection. In some of the
tales she is described as riding a white horse.

This gave me the idea of calling my first heroine Rhiann, and calling the first novel in the trilogy The White Mare.

The
ancestors of the Celts were a horse-riding and raising people, and
horses seem to be central to their society. They were not used solely
as beasts of burden, but as mounts for the nobles and warriors,
enabling them to show off their wealth. They were clearly loved for
their prestige, their beauty and speed.

Iron Age
excavations have uncovered thousands of decorated fittings for horses,
for riding reins and harnesses as well as terrets and fittings to
harness them to chariots. Roman and Greek writers speak of the Celtic
veneration of the horse. They often appear on Celtic coins. Though we
have limited evidence of them being used in battle, they were certainly
an important part of making warriors look strong and terrifying as they
raced up to battle, to scare their enemies.

An enamelled horse harness fitting, UK

But the cult of the horse is not mainly military. One of the most
widespread of Celtic goddesses is the horse goddess Epona (epos means
horse in Gaulish). There are Roman-era inscriptions and statues to her
in Britain, Gaul, the Rhineland, North Africa and Rome. She is often
portraying fertility and abundance, shown alongside foals or
suckling mares, and holding sheaves of wheat, loaves of bread, or
fruit.

There is another important aspect to Epona, as described by Miranda Green in her excellent book Celtic Goddesses.

“The
early Celtic kings were selected from the knightly elite of society;
where the ability to afford a fighting horse was a mark of high status.
Sovereignty involves the guardianship of tribal boundaries and the
keeping of peace, so that the business of raising crops and livestock
can progress undisturbed. Epona is female, and so is her
horse. This is surely a deliberate identification of a spiritual entity
in whom the power of fertility was intense.” In other words, Epona and
other horse goddesses are also symbols of tribal protection and
sovereignty.

The horse carved into the chalk hill at Uffingtonin Wiltshire. It is next to an Iron Age hillfort, andmay be some statement about tribal territory

Epona is often identified with the Welsh goddess Rhiannon. So
my character Rhiann is a priestess, a royal lady called the
“Mother of the Land”, who rides a pale grey horse. She was named after
the Welsh mother goddess, who represented fertility and the protection
of the land, and who rode a white horse.

Since in my books, royal blood passes through females,
specifically Rhiann, the horse symbolism of fertility is also apt. And
since it was by marrying her that Eremon gained leadership of the
tribe, she is also playing a sovereignty role, protecting her territory
by choosing the strongest man.

There are even hints
in some old writings and myths that in Ireland, on his inauguration a
king actually mated with a white mare, which was then ritually eaten.
In this way, by joining with the horse goddess, he was mated to the
land he was sworn to protect.

I didn't go that far!

Goddess and King

The horse goddess symbolism in relation to kingship is continued in the theme of the sacred goddess and king.

Irish
myths contain the idea of sacred marriage: the ritual union of the
goddess of the land, the fertile, fecundant spirit of the earth itself,
with the mortal king. This means that on his inauguration, the king
enters into a sacred partnership with the kingdom. The union with the
goddess legitimizes his rule and gives him sovereignty, allowing the
land to prosper.

The goddess would only enter this
marriage if the king was suitable, and even after marriage, she could
reject a weak ruler in favor of a man who was better for Ireland’s
well-being. She therefore validated a king’s rule, and was the symbol
of the land’s fertility through crops and livestock.

In
Irish myth, goddesses and magical women often perform this role, and in
the marriage rite they hold a cup of liquor to the king to drink,
thereby forming the contract. This idea is strongly connected to Queen
Maeve. Her name means "she who intoxicates" and comes from the same
root as "mead" - a connection to her giving the sacred fertility drink
to a king? She is also described as being married to many different
kings and princes, and scholars wonder whether this means she was once
a fertility / sovereignty goddess, "demoted" by the medieval
monks into a mere human female - making her bolshy, bloodthirsty,
and sexually provocative for good measure.

I used
this goddess-king idea in all three books of The Dalriada Trilogy, with
my human characters acting as the mother goddess of the land in
conferring rulership on the kings. I also touched on it during
Deirdre’s defeat of King Cinet near the end of The Swan Maiden.

See Miranda Green’s book Celtic Goddesses for more detail.

Gods

I
also drew the gods and goddess that my characters worship from
mythology: some Irish gods, some Welsh, some Gaulish, as we don’t know
what language the proto-Picts spoke in Scotland.

The King Stag

The horned god Cernunnoson the Gundestrup Cauldron

Among red deer, every year the stags fight each other for supremacy and
for the right to mate with the hinds. The fights ensure that only the
strongest males can pass on their genes. This may have given rise to a
mythological idea that every year, the old King Stag must give way to
new, younger blood.

Some writers wonder whether in the distant past,
perhaps leadership among early peoples was also decided this way: each
year, a new King Stag was put in place to mate with the priestess or
goddess of the tribe, and the old King Stag was sacrificed. I used
hints of this idea in my books — there are visions of the King Stag who
joins with Rhiann at her moon-bleeding rite, and later I describe a
stag rite that helps the hero win a physical battle.

One
of the most well-known Celtic gods is Cernunnos. On the silver
Gundestrup Cauldron, one of the most famous Celtic artifacts, he is
shown with a headdress of antlers. He is known as the horned or stag
god, and is related in Welsh myth to Herne the Hunter.

The Otherworld

The triple spiral inside the neolithic mound of Newgrange in Ireland

My books play around with ideas of reincarnation, rebirth, and being
able to travel to the Otherworld through dreams and trances,
gaining visions of past and future. These motifs are all drawn from
Irish and Welsh myths.

Reading Celtic myths, one is struck by how fluidly
people and spirit beings move between the Otherworld and “This World.”
The Otherworld exists alongside our own world, beyond a
flimsy veil, in parallel as it were. It is not a heaven
that is far distant, in the sky. It is all around us, all the time.

There
are particular points of entry into The Otherworld: caves, springs,
rivers, groves, and swamps. They are often watery places, at the
borders where the two worlds touch each other. We have
ample evidence that the Celts venerated and worshipped at such
places: archaeologists have found thousands of offerings of valuable
goods deposited in bogs and rivers, and shrines built at springs, the
most famous being Bath in England, which was dedicated to the
goddess Sulis.

Peoples
who lived earlier than the Celts - known as Neolithic and Bronze Age
peoples - built underground tombs and
mounds, such as Newgrange in Ireland. The carvings suggest that
these Neolithic and Bronze Age people believed the hidden passages
they created were pathways to their realms of
spirit, or the dead. These ancient tombs littered the
landscapes the Celts later inhabited, and so
they also appear in Celtic myths as gateways to the Otherworld. They
were the realms of the sidhe, or Otherworld beings; later turned into
the fairy folk. Sidhe might indeed
mean "the people of the mounds."

This idea of the
closeness of the Otherworld, its parallel nature, the fluidity of
traveling back and forth, and the sacredness of natural places is
central to all my books.